A talk to mark National Doctors’ Day will focus on the rich history of medicines in the city
Clothes of plague victims being burnt by a crowd in 1896. Pic courtesy/National Army Museum
The echoes of the sort of devastation that Mumbai has witnessed due to Covid-19 were heard in the city way back in 1896, when a plague spread its tentacles across what was then Bombay. There were roughly 8 lakh people living here back then and since modern medicine hadn’t yet been invented, most of the infected people died within days, with only a few managing to survive.
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Dr Farokh Udwadia
Tomorrow, a talk that the Asiatic Society of Mumbai’s Mumbai Research Centre (MRC) is organising on the occasion of National Doctors’ Day, will shed more light on that turbulent period, with its broader theme being Medicine in Bombay Through the Ages. Dr Farokh Udwadia will host it and MRC chairperson Dr Shehernaz Nalwalla, who curated the event, tells us, “He is going to talk about the early doctors in the city and how different medicines were made, apart from the effects of the plague.” She adds that 90-year-old Udwadia has a huge fan following in the city, and that diverse other interests such as literature and music add colour to his understanding of medicines. So, tune in and listen to the talk, at a time when the city’s medical history is being permanently written into the annals of the future yet again.
On: July 1, 7.30 pm
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